Eternal Perspectives

(Brad at 21st Century Reformation has undertaken an enormous work aimed at church renewal: ambitiously called “The New 95 Theses Project,” his goal is to collect theses identifying malformations, deformations, and atrophied aspects of the local church in an effort to refresh the visible body of Christ. Thesis #1, which is his own, is

What follows is my own attempt to address a troubled area in the church. If I am able, I will provide my own thesis at the end of this study; if not, I’ll leave it others more adept than I to state a thesis for Brad’s project.

In all fairness, I must begin this by saying that I am about to write a post by Nancy Pearcey. Much of my thinking (and most of what follows) is drawn from her latest book, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity.

Practically speaking, this post is about why I am not an evangelical and why, most likely, you aren’t either. Pearcey has clarified this and classified me in her book; the quotes that follow, unless otherwise noted, are from TT. If you haven’t read it, you need to; if you have read it, you know what’s coming.

The chapter I’ll be citing most is ominously entitled, “When America Met Christianity – Guess Who Won?” It examines the effect of the American Revolution on the Second Great Awakening and, in turn, that Awakening’s impact on the institution of the American church.

First, however, it is necessary to define evangelicalism historically and accurately. Pearcey says,

What does it mean to be evangelical? . . . American historians typically use [the term] . . . to refer to a movement that grew out of the First and Second Great Awakenings, embracing a revivlaist style of preaching and an emphasis on person conversion (the ‘New Birth’). Because it was a renewal movement within the church, its goal was not so much to convert nonbelievers as to enliven the faith of nominal believers – to bring individuals to a subjective experence of the saving truths of the gospel.

So far, so good. But a slight but significant shift surfaces in evangelicalism that had unforseen and unfortunate effects:

Classic Protestantism stemming from the Reformation defined the Christian life largely in terms of participation in the church’s corporate worship and liturgy . . . But the revival movement cast much of that aside. It stressed the individual’s direct access to God apart from any church, defining the Christian life primarily in terms of individual devotion and holiness. Thus the rhetoric of revival tended to have an anti-authoritarian and anti-traditionalist flavor, denouncing liturgy and ceremonies as empty, external ritualism . . . any protestant who emphasizes the subjective and ethical aspects of Christianity, rather than its official and churchly characteristics, is an evangelical.

Pearcey covers the First Great Awakening in her previous chapter, “What’s So Good About Evangelicalism?” and offers this summary:

In many ways, the second Awakening carried forward the themes of the first Awakening, so as we tell some of its stories, bear in mind the major characteristics listed in the previous chapter: the focus on an intense emotional conversion experience; the celebrity model of leadership; a deep suspicion of theological learning, especially as embodied in creeds and confessions; and an increasingly individualistic view of the church, which borrowed heavily from the political philosophy of the day . . . It became common for leaders in the second Awakening to transfer the rhetoric of independence uncritically from the political sphere to the religious sphere. (emphases mine)

Pearcey effectively demonstrates that the seeds for anti-intellectualism and even postmodernism can be traced back to the American mentality of individualism and sufficiency. Also striking are the features of the first and second Awakenings that have either endured or re-emerged in the past thirty years or so. She continues:

For example, in the first Awakening, revivalists had not attacked church structure per se, but only the abuses that had turned the clergy into a privileged class. By contrast, in the second Awakening, church authority itself was denounced as ‘tyranny.’ Creeds and liturgies were nothing but ‘popery’ and ‘priestcraft.’ (Charles Finney denounced the Westminster Confession as . . .

a ‘paper pope.’) Many began to argue that the American revolution was not yet complete: We have cast off civil tyranny, they said, but now we need to cast off ecclesiastical tyranny. The priesthood of all believers was taken to mean religion of the people, by the people, and for the people. (emphases hers)

Pearcey draws attention to the common themes that were present in the second Awakening and are also present today: “appeal to emotions; the distrust of learning; the lack of critical distance from the secular philosophies of the day.” Even as a fish does not know that it is wet, so the modern church has been influenced by the culture in which it has taken root.

She uses the example of the 19th Century Baptist John Leland to demonstrate the influence of political thought on the church during the Second Great Awakening. Referring to Leland, she explains:

He urged people to make a deliberate effort to free themselves from all natural authorities, whether church, state, teachers, or even the family.

Leland’s rejection of religious authority led him to insist that the simple and the ignorant are actually more competent than the learned clergy to read and understand the Bible: ‘Is not the simple man, who makes nature and reason his study, a competent judge of things?’ Here we see an early expression of the Baptist concept of soul competency . . .

As liberal individualism was taking root in politics, it was being uncritically applied to the churches, producing a highly individualistic and democratic ecclesiology. Modern values like autonomy and popular sovereignty became simply taken for granted in evangelical churches. (emphases hers)

The Second Great Awakening also overturned the prevailing concept of salvation from a process mediated through the church to an immediate, individualistic salvation and assurance thereof.

In early New England, to become a member of a church, a candidate went through a long process of learning the Bible, the creeds, the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, the catechism. Then he or she was required to submit to an initial examination by the church elders and minister . . . The whole process was ‘a kind of community rite.’

The conversion experience alone was expected to take years of struggle before a person sensed the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit, giving assurance of being forgiven and counted among the elect . . .

By contrast, the revivalists offered assurance of salvation on the spot. Instead of going through a lengthy process, the individual made a decision – and he was saved instantly. Instead of being taught and tested by the church, the convert announced to others what he had experienced.

The effect on the local church was profound, for “the American mind had been altered.” It was as though Christianity in America had suddenly entered into the biblical period record in the Book of Judges in the Old Testament, when “there was no king [church authority] in Israel [America]; everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Jud 21:25). The opinion of the young, untrained, new believer carried as much weight as did those of the old, seasoned, mature believer.

The church was no longer an organic community into which one was received, and certainly not a spiritual authority to which one submitted. Rather, it was a collection of equal, autonomous individuals coming together by choice. (emphases mine)

The concepts, theories, and philosophies that shaped the American mind were not merely spillage from the political scene; American politics had been given its form by philosophies imported from Europe. The roots of secularism were deeper than they at first appeared:

Populist evangelicals were sounding the same note as the early social contract theorists – Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau – who regarded social structures as the creation of sheer choice, formed by the conset of autonomous individuals living in a ’state of nature’ . . .

For many Americans, the meaning of the Revolution was not just that they had eliminated a king but that they had started a new world from scratch. ‘We have it in our power to begin the world over again,’ Thomas Paine exulted. ‘A situation similar to the present has not happened since the days of Noah until now.’

This was a new and exhilarating view of society. In the colonial period, the dominant political philosophy had been classical and Christian republicanism, which was highly communal. It called on individuals to submit to a set of preexisting, normative social structures – family, church, state – instituted and sanctioned by the Creator. Virtue consisted in accepting the responsibilities attached to one’s prescribed role within the social organism, practicing self-sacrifice for the common good. But in the new liberalism, social structures were not instituted by God; they came into being only when individuals created them in order to protect their interests. The ethos of self-sacrifice was replaced by one of self-assertion and self-interest. (emphasis mine)

The effects of the Second Great Awakening continue to stalk the pulpits in many “evangelical” churches today. Discernment and critical thinking are all-but absent in many congregations and each member is an authority unto themselves.

Instead of analyzing the new ideas from a biblical prspective, many evangelicals embraced them uncritically. If the people could form their own state, why not their own church as well? There was a widespread conviction that the rise of democracy was the most significant event in two millennia -

- a novus ordo seclorum (’new order of the ages,’ the phrase on the back of our dollar bills). And just as Americans felt they were establishing a ‘new order’ politically, so many also hoped that they could start a new church. They would sweep away the rubble of the ages and start over from scratch, recreating the church of New Testament times . . .

It was the Reformation that first introduced the new theme – the idea that the past was a morass of corruption and that the true church could be found only by throwing out centuries of historical development to recover an earlier, purer pattern. For populist evangelicals, however, even the Reformers’ work was inadequate; after all, they had still retained a host of churchly trappings like creeds and liturgies. Evangelicals wanted to go much further: They vigorously denounced creeds, confessions, ceremonies, and ecclesiastical structures as violations of Christian liberty that must be stripped away.

The thinking – or, more accurately, the lack of thinking – that characterized much of the Second Great Awakening bore fruit immediately and repeatedly. The disdain of authorities and traditions is one of the badges of modern evangelicalism.

Pearcey brings the chapter to a close by describing the positive and negative fruit of the second Awakening. Of the latter, she stresses that

the cavalier rejection of the past stripped the church of the rich resources of centuries’ worth of theological reflection, Scriptural meditation, and spiritual experience. It inculcated an attitude that there was nothing to be gained from grappling with the thought of the great minds of the past – Augustine and Tertullian, Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther and John Calvin. It was an approach doomed, almost by definition, to anti-intellectualism and theological shallowness.

Keith at The Christian Mind has the following quote at the top of his blog:

If Christians cannot communicate as thinking beings, they are reduced to encountering one another only at the shallow level of gossip and small talk. Hence the perhaps peculiarly modern problem – the loneliness of the thinking Christian. – Harry Blamires

This is a not uncommon situation at many evangelical churches today, and it can be traced back to a failure on the part of Americans to protect the practice of their faith from the secular philosophies that shaped their world and minds. The seeds of postmodernism can be found in the First and Second Great Awakenings; the eventual fruit of those seeds are tragically rampant in evangelicalism.

In summary, my suggested corrective for renewing the church is something along the following lines:

Thesis: The church has allowed herself to be influenced by an unchallenged philosophy that is more reflective of American culture than biblical distinctives. It is incumbent upon churches, therefore, to return to an emphasis on each of the following: (1) the importance of regarding oneself as a member of a community of believers and not as a Christian individualist who is disconnected from the life of the body; (2) a confession of its failure to submit to those institutions and authorities that God has established, thereby rejecting competing concepts of autonomy and being one’s own arbiter of right and wrong, and (3) the importance of recognizing and appreciating the rich history of the church and its leaders throughout the ages, abandoning the conceit of postmodern belief in the superiority and greater wisdom of the present compared to the past.